They put the hook to Rep. Charles Rangel’s ’72 Mercedes Benz yesterday, hours after The Post reported that the vehicle had been illegally parked in a House garage – covered with a tarp, sans plates and a current registration sticker – for years.

The arrangement apparently allowed Rangel to avoid thousands of dollars in car-storage fees – a sweet deal if you can get it.

And Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had no trouble getting it. It’s good to be the kingpin.

Alas for the Harlem Democrat, now in his 37th year in Congress, the good times may be coming to an end.

The chairman of the House Ethics Committee yesterday agreed to consider the congressman’s varied transgressions.

It’s about time – but not enough.

There’s sure plenty to look at.

Start with his four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem and his failure to report $75,000 in apparently taxable rental income from a Caribbean beachfront villa.

Then there is his apparent failure to report income from the sale of:

* A home he owned in the District of Columbia.

* A Harlem apartment (though its value had allegedly doubled over two years).

* And a condo in Sunny Isles, Fla., apparently at a $60,000 profit.

And so on and so forth.

Rangel says he’s hired a forensic accountant to untangle the mess for him – and, presumably, for the Internal Revenue Service as well.

But while that may solve the congressman’s personal problems, it does nothing to address the real question here:

How does someone as ethically obtuse as Charles Rangel get off sitting as chairman of Ways and Means?

As the Heritage Foundation’s Danielle Doane explains on the preceeding page, the committee is arguably the most powerful – and certainly among the most sensitive – in Congress.

The opportunities for overt abuse speak for themselves – as does the damage that could be done simply through slovenliness, neglect or both.

If Charles Rangel can’t be trusted with a parking space in the House garage, how in the world can he be trusted with Ways & Means?